Black Box Report

One of these things is not like the other. In July, the White House's interim Iraq report reported 8 out of 18 benchmarks met by the Iraq government, an outcome that you would have to be generous to grade as a D-minus. But in a draft report from the independent, non-partisan Government Accountability Office that was recently leaked to the Washington Post , only 3 of those 18 benchmarks have been fully met. That’s what you call an unmitigated F. This is what it looks like when you take off the rose-colored glasses:

The point of the surge, you'll recall, was to actually reduce violence in Iraq enough to allow the government to begin working functionally. As crazy as the idea obviously was, that was the effect it intended to have. What's happened instead is that the strategy didn't work at all (a fact the American public very obviously has a right to know) and no amount of hiding the information helped made the strategy any less of a failure.

Violence against US troops is down, but violence against Iraqi citizens is as bad as ever. And then there's the violence they're not even counting:

50 people died in clashes in Karbala in the South between the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army. These militias represent the two largest Shi'a political parties in the South...This will have no impact on the President's measures of violence...The military's numbers don't include what is going on in the South because Shi'a on Shi'a violence is not considered sectarian.

Sectarian, no. But deadly nonetheless. Now, that might seem disingenuous, leaving out data like that when trying to present a realistic view of the situation in Iraq, but as we can see from the leaked GAO report, the administration doesn't seem to be interested in "realistic". See, there are good leaks, like last week's NIE report that had its language softened by Gen. Petraeus to take the edge off. Then there are bad leaks, like the GAO draft:

The Post...explains why someone leaked a draft copy of the report to them: the leaker was afraid it would get watered down before final publication and wanted to make sure that someone knew what the GAO really thinks. Considering what happens to most reports that go through the DoD wringer, I'd say that shows considerable foresight.

And the watering down has already begun.

They say bad news can make it halfway around the world before good news has the time to put its pants on. Hence the administration’s efforts to tie up the bad news and hide it in the basement. But stamping it down in one spot just means it will pop up somewhere else. And so, in more bad news for the rose-colored glasses set, yesterday the Pentagon announced there are so many disagreements with the level of progress in Iraq that they will not present a unified consensus report to the President next month. Seems they don't all want to participate in the empty happy talk:

Mark it down. August 29, 2007. That's the day the Pentagon announced it was done being responsible for Mr. Bush's waste of lives, time, and money in Iraq. Tonight, the Defense Department has essentially told the President, "Thanks for the war, George, but it's all you from here on out, buddy."

So things may look bleak, but I'm sure throwing another $200 billion at the problem will make everything right. We're spending over $3 billion a week as it is...we've spent over $6.5 million since I started writing this post.

Good thing there’s nothing else worthwhile we could be spending $456,000,000 on:

I can’t get accurate numbers for what has been spent and will be spent eventually to rebuild the Gulf Coast, but as of an hour or so ago, the National Priorities Project estimated we’ve spent $456,278,478,000 in Iraq (it’s hard to get an accurate estimate because the numbers mount so rapidly every minute…).

Can’t help wondering how much farther along the rebuilding would be, how much more could be spent to improve public education, insure the 43 million Americans without health insurance, ad nauseum if those bucks were being spent here.

Great legacy you’re leaving, George.

$447,340,069,278 spent on Iraq at the time of this post!

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!